| President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative of jointly building the Belt and Road in 2013.Since the initiative was proposed,a series of major changes have taken place in the international community.The initiative has received widespread attention in the international community,as an active effort to deepen reform and opening-up of China under the new background and the new situation.As a major strategic concept,it continuously promotes diplomacy with countries along the Belt and Road.With the achievement of a series of major achievements in the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative,the public opinions about the international community is increasingly dominating over the newspapers,among which are the supporting echoes from the countries along the route,as well as the important voices from the great powers in the international community.Out of political needs and self-interest considerations,the influence exerted in the discourses of international public opinions.America being a major country with important influence in the world economy and politics,its attitude and position towards the Belt and Road Initiative is of utmost importance.And Russia an international power with important geopolitical influence across the Eurasian continent and along the Belt and Road,its attitude and position cannot be underestimated either.Given the importance of knowing the attitudes of different countries,it is necessary to study the engagement resources of their news discourses.This thesis studies the distribution of the Belt and Road-related news discourses in The Washington Post and The Moscow Times,and how the media in the United States and Russia express their positions and attitudes by using the Belt and Road-related news discourses.This thesis uses the Dow Jones Factiva database to build a corpus of 49 news discourses about the Belt and Road in The Washington Post and The Moscow Times,the time span is from September 2013 to December 2020.The Washington Post has26 discourses with 25,412 words;The Moscow Times has 23 discourses with 22,412 words,a total of 47,824 words.Using Ant Conc as the analysis tool,a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis methods is used to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the engagement resources present in the corpus.The study shows that there are a significant number of engagement resources in the American and Russian discourses on the Belt and Road Initiative.By comparing the frequency of dialogic expansion and dialogic contraction,it is found that both media have different attitudes and positions on the Belt and Road Initiative.Compared with America,the Russian media has used more dialogic expansion,especially in the use of entertain is much more frequent than America.This has reserved more space for the dialogue between reporters and readers on the Belt and Road Initiative.Compared with Russia,the American media has used more dialogic contraction.This is not only reflected in the fact that the American side uses more dialogic contraction than the Russian side,but also in the use of dialogic expansion by America,a large proportion of attribution with less spatial expansion are used,which further reduces the dialogue space between reporters and readers on the Belt and Road Initiative.Adopting engagement resources in appraisal theory,it found that the attitudes and positions of the American and Russian media on the Belt and Road Initiative in a clear and intuitive way,and possible to explore the reasons for the different attitudes expressed by the American and Russian media,which is of certain reference value in the application of appraisal theory,it also improves the capability of foreign discourse on the Belt and Road Initiative. |
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